Mojo - 3. Chapter 3: Wayfarers

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Chapter 3: Wayfarers

“Okay, Kohl,” the figure drawing instructor said. “Grab that pole.”

I surveyed the small collection of props on the platform where I stood. Sure enough, there was something like a cut off broomstick with a pinecone screwed in for a finial.

As the teacher made his way up to me, through all the students and their drawing pads, I bent over, flashing my naked ass towards the hottest young bearded guy in the loft space. The late-afternoon/early-evening light coming in the large industrial-sized windows framed my body definition perfectly, and I knew it.

I liked being naked, and I’m anything but shy, so why not make a few extra bucks and titillate my fellow Flying Dutchman inhabitants in the process?

“Now,” cried Dryden, who was likewise bearded and sexy himself, “let’s pretend this beach ball is a giant globe.”

He had said this more for his students than me, but fetched it from the collection and placed the striped plastic sphere near the front of the dais.

“Stand holding the staff in your right hand, and prop your foot on the globe….” After he mused silently in my direction for a moment, he added, “Yes…almost…. Don’t move!”

In a flash, the art drawing teacher was up on the stage, rummaging in the pile of set pieces behind me. I winked at the hottie with his charcoal all set to go. Just then, my eyes cast themselves upwards in time to see a dusty wreath of plastic ivy descend upon my head.

Dryden clapped his hands together once in triumph, and announced to the class of students: “Perfect! Now, this will be a twenty-minute pose, and think of Kohl here as ‘Dionysus conquering the world.’”

I held my chin a little more erect; I’d been promoted to demigod status.

Being a figure drawing model exerts strains on the muscles, but this pose was relatively easy, and holding it for twenty minutes was not so difficult.

If I slid my eyes to the right a bit, I could see the sexy guy holding his charcoal stick to ‘measure’ my thigh, or arm, or maybe even my cock – nah, he’d need a bigger stick for that, lol. But while watching, my mind wandered from him and on to the trappings of the room around us.

Neil Campbell had put us up with him in Long Beach. Me and Gordon were happy to be away from West Hollywood, but this building was just as weird, albeit in a different way.

Our week, submerged in the raggedy earth-tones of the Flying Dutchman’s interiors, had been interesting to say the least. Getting lost had been a regular happening, because back alleys and dead-ends abounded throughout this 50,000 square-foot, three-story warehouse of the olden days. It had been converted into an artists’ live-work commune, where everywhere you went smelled pleasantly of patchouli and oregano – wink, wink. The pressure on the city fathers downtown must have been great to ‘get rid of the hippies,’ for the views west from the acres of windows onto the scenic bay were incredible. A developer now would snap up this property in a heartbeat, thereby taking it out of public use, and auction off private, blue-blood condos for a few mill a pop.

We had packed our stuff the same night my ex broke in on our privacy and laughed like an ass at our intimate moment. After taking the room key from him, and shoving Assauer out the door, we jammed our clothes in bags and got ourselves over here, away from wherever he was back in L.A.

Living in the Flying Dutchman had taken the stain off our minds, except for the unpleasant task of me having to sleep with Neil from time to time as ‘rent.’

Napoleon’s boyfriend was annoying – a forty-year-old Australian who hated America and Americans because he secretly loved all things red, white and blue. I’ve found a few Germans behaving in such a messed-up way, but this intense love-hate psychosis seems endemic among Aussies and Kiwis. Whatever’s at the root of it, this mentality is certainly a handicap for the one carrying it around in their heart at all times. Worse yet, Neil was a sham hippie – a middle-class surfer with blond dreads down to his shoulders and spray tan to cover his wrinkled, UV-furrowed face; he got incredibly prune-like from sun damage caused two decades ago on Down Under beaches. I don’t know, maybe all the lobster-broiling of his skin fried his brain too.

Oh well, better I top him – strictly from behind – than he turns his jaded sights on my beautiful Gordon.

Snapping back to present, I saw Dryden moving about the room, encouraging the artists and suggesting subtle approaches to best capture my amazing physique. This space was one of many common rooms in the Flying Dutchman, this particular one being known as the Mannequin Store, because plaster dummies lined the walls and collected themselves in the corners.

The owner had done nothing by way of painting the exposed wooden beams, pillars or floors, and hadn’t used any drywall to partition off areas for folk’s private spaces. Instead, architectural salvage items – like entire antique wood and glass storefronts, some even retaining the striped metal awnings from out in front – sectioned off some live-work apartments from the common areas. Places of other functions were demarcated by mismatched wooden doors, bolted together in a colorful line.

In front of these varied backdrops, the owner had assembled an impressive collection of shabby-chic everything. Cool rugs of minimalist designs delineated sitting areas of Louis XV hotel-settees and Walter Gropius backless armchairs; hanging lamps, apparently from the love niches of every defunct motel in the region, shed light over end tables in motley styles as diverse as pirate chests to milk crates.

Where there was no seating, upright pianos and organ consoles proliferated. Piled on top of them were veritable walls of stereo speakers, the kind 1970s audiophiles thought were cool – the bigger the better.

On top of the defunct amplifiers lived artwork, frameless paintings and ceramic sculptures.

Tibetan, African and Asian religious articles were everywhere as well, some grouped into little shrine settings, where say a Vishnu statue presided over votive offerings of crosses and Dharma wheels. Most times, the little shrine-ettes like these stood in front of backdrops. A popular decoration were sacred parasols from Nepal and Ethiopia canting this way and that from umbrella stands.

More Far-East flavor was provided by Bali beds tucked at the ends of hallways; the only way you’d know you were entering a private space was by glancing at one of the hundreds of darkened and unplugged television sets. Here people used the screens like message boards, scrawling such messages of hospitality as “Welcome to Pat’s Bohemian Palace,” or “Now entering King Arthur’s dungeon.”

The figure-drawing instructor went on the move again, shifting my attention briefly to the entryway. A gaggle of giggling guys and girls passed by outside the room, spotting my dick and balls with grins.

I stood a little more erect with pride.

Some people here at the Flying Dutchman were really cool, and I’d found the building’s intricacies a great venue to indulge in brief but intense encounters! Surveying my prospects for such another one, besides Mr. Hottie with the beard, there was one super tall black guy with a nose ring I’d seen around. He wasn’t in the room now, but my imagination saw him all too clearly: an appealing, six-foot-six tall-drink of a man, and I wondered if he were into bottoming at all.

The types of people living at this artists’ commune were quite familiar to me and Gordon, even though most of them were strangers to us. When you’re without family and on the run, either from your past, present or future, then you are part of a community like this, and it’s one I can relate to.

“Five-minute mark, people!” Dryden called out. “Let’s get the concept down and you can finish on your own later.”

I shifted my eyes to the left, in the instructor’s direction, and stiffened a bit – by which I mean it’s possible my dick actually pulled back a tiny degree – because Neil Campbell leaned with folded arms in the doorway, licking his chops.

‘Nope. Not in the mood,’ I thought, but not only did he have his leery sights set on me again, he had me cornered.

I righted my view and pretended not to see him, all the while considering my options.

I hit on a plan, and it was none too sophisticated.

As soon as the instructor called time, every student stood to stretch, as I knew they would. They blocked the aisles, so I instantly dropped the staff, snatched my silky robe and took off.

Behind me was a private passage, leading I knew not where.

Odysseus-like, spurred on by a wrathful fate, I hurriedly shouldered my sleeves, pulled the belt loosely around my middle and took the first turning to the left. Another corridor, this one made of recycled shutters of green, white and gray, stretched on for fifty feet. I picked up my heels, thinking I heard Neil’s footsteps appearing from where I had veered off the main course.

The end of the louvered corridor opened into a living area of car seats on the floor, and accordions on the walls.

“Kohl…?” I heard someone Australian faintly call from behind me.

I booked it across the open space, not knowing where the hell I was, but hung a hard right at a piling of demon figures from Indonesia.

If there was a television milepost here, I missed it, for the new passage was strung like a circus tent with dozens of Himalayan prayer flags and twinkling white Christmas lights.

Glancing over my shoulder, I thought I saw a shadow move at the exit from the car-seat lounge area, and wound up bumping into a person coming out of a bathroom.

“Sorry,” I whispered, not even seeing who it was before I continued on my way. But I didn’t have far to go, for after another twenty feet, the hallway dead-ended at the fancy carving and thick drapes of a huge Chinese bed.

I immediately ducked in, standing barefoot on the silk bedspread and pillows to draw the curtains shut.

I held my breath, listening as footsteps approached. The guy I had passed in the hall stuck his head in. It was that tall guy with the nose ring and handsome smile I’d seen around and liked.

Now his expression said: WTF.

“Dude, this is my room.”

I dragged him in by the collar and slapped the drapes closed again, pleading for silence with a finger to my lips.

We both listened, and soon more footsteps sounded. A pause followed.

“Burtron, mate! You seen a scruffy fella wearin’ a dressing gown come this way?”

Neil’s brassy brogue from the other side of the curtain made the sexy black guy eye up and down.

“No,” he said. “I’ve been asleep, man.”

“Kay,” Neil said dejectedly and walked away.

I hushed my savior one more time and peeked through the curtains to make sure my tormentor was gone.

Relieved, I turned around and gave the guy a huge smile.

“What’s up, man?” he asked, sitting comfortably on a pile of cushions at one end. “You can sit down.”

I did, crossing my legs under me.

“You always go around like this?”

I chucked the lapels of my robe. “Like this? No.”

“I mean like that?” His grin blossomed, raising a hand to make a halo motion over my head.

“Ah.” I felt up my hairline and took down the dusty demigod diadem. “Thanks for telling me. Might have gone on all day like that.

My host reached over to his side, pulled out a lighter, ashtray and joint. “No problem. Smoke?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

As he lit up and took the first draw, I explained the ‘what’s up’ part of his initial question. “I’m avoiding that guy because he’s thirsty; been crashing on a cot in his room for the last seven days, and I’m getting tired of his company, if you know what I mean.”

He exhaled, passing me the blunt. “I do.”

I took a drag and held it in my lungs. Almost instantaneously, I began to loosen up.

“Like it?” he asked.

I nodded and took a second hit.

“You know, I’ve seen you around. Didn’t know you’re assigned to Neil.”

I coughed “I’m not,” and handed him his joint.

He chuckled. “Like the strain?”

I did; I was feeling really mellow. “It’s good shit.”

“Ought to be. I worked hard for it. Hand-picked Bubba Kush.”

“I don’t know much about pot, but this stuff is awesome. How do you know it’s handpicked anyway?”

He laughed again, the erotic silver ring of his septum piercing bouncing gleefully in the light. “Because I picked it!”

I admitted confusion. “You mean like Knott’s Berry Farm, pick your own ganja?”

“No, no. During the autumn and early winter months, me and my friends pick pot at an organic grow operation in Humboldt County. We have a good time, but it’s ten- to twelve-hour days, and we have to sleep in tents.”

“Oh, wow.”

He took a hit and passed the porro back my way.

“Yeah,” he said. “But I can make a lot of money in a short amount of time, and part of the pay – if I want it – is in product. I’ve got some Blue Dream around here too if you’d like to sample it.”

“No, this is perfect.” I shed a smoky grin on him. And then, after I took another deep breath, felt like laughing for no reason.

“Burtron,” he said, taking the joint back.

“I’m Kohl. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. You have an accent.”

“Yeah. I’m German.”

“Cool.”

The open smile he gave me was really warm; I liked him. You can tell a good guy right away, and Burtron was one of them for sure. “What led you to the Flying Dutchman?” I asked.

“Cock.”

I choked on a stream of laughter. “That’s as good a reason as any!”

“Yeah, no doubt. But I mean one particular dick. See, a guy I liked was a painter and he hung out here before he broke my heart with a hooker-slut from Brooklyn and moved across country to live in sin with her.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, man.”

“No worries. It’s his loss, right?”

“Defo. From what I can see, he was an idiot to leave you.”

He chuckled once through his nose, and then inhaled from his blunt while his eyes squinted at mine.

“This place is pretty cool,” I admitted. “But I can’t quite figure it out.”

“The whole concept?”

“Yeah.”

“The owner is an artist and musician, and he felt the corporate squeeze on decent space due to gentrification, etc., especially for our LGBT kind. So he set up this nice, queer space that’s safe too.”

I started to laugh, the pot melting the marrow of my funny bone. “That’s cool, but is it just me, or does this place look like the biggest antique mall in America?”

We both busted up. And I have to say, my joke was pretty funny.

Burtron calmed down and explained a bit more, after he kicked his tall legs out and reclined. “The owner is the organist at the old movie palaces around the L.A. area. When he’s not out playing for a silent film, concert or something, he’s back here, playing for us Flying Dutchies, as we like to call ourselves.”

“Ah. That explains it.” I had heard a couple nights’ worth of organ music, but the space was so massive and confusing, I’d never been able to track down where it was coming from. “And that’s why there are organ consoles everywhere! I get it.”

“Yeah, he can’t let any of them be scrapped, so they all come here.”

I was feeling nice and cozy now. I adjusted my robe and really stretched out, a hand supporting my head so I could look at the handsome black man from close to the bedspread. “What do you do?” I asked. “If you do anything at all.”

“I’m a racial-kink cult leader.”

“What’s that?!” I sat up.

“I’m like a sex therapist, only helping guys deal with one particular hang-up.”

“And which one is that?”

“Guilt. White-guy guilt: the sins of slavery, and for still feeling today like they are better than African Americans.”

“Fucking hell—”

"Yeah. My followers all have the same desire to atone with their bodies to superior black dick. They beg to be belittled, shackled, spit on, told how worthless their tiny little pee-pees are, but most of all they love to hear how pleasurable their holes feel while I fuck ‘em.”

I started to get hard, really hard, and I think he noticed. “Um—”

“My last name’s Hammerick, so I go by The Black Hammer on social media. I’ve got a pretty big following, and post daily non-affirmations about what pieces of shit my devotees are.”

“Cool. Is that how one goes about being a modern sex cult leader?”

“It is for me. My internet followers sign up on waiting lists, and I travel all over the country for well-paid one-on-one ‘Atonement Sessions.’ I’ve got some big-wig clients, let me tell you!”

“Oh, yeah. What’s the busiest region of the country for you?”

He paused a moment, before we both shouted the obvious: “Washington!”

We howled with laughter, but then a serious thought crept into my mind. Maybe he would know….

“Um, as you’re in the sex cult biz and all, I wonder if you’ve even run into another group operating around here with a weird kind of logo.”

“Describe. There are a lot of cults out there; you’d be surprised how many and how diversified they all are.”

“This one’s logo is like a winged lion, except where the neck and face of the animal should be, there’s an erect human phallus. A dick. Although, I think they might have a fetish for animals too.”

Even before completing my question, I could read Burtron Hammerick's answer was going to be ‘complex,’ no matter what words he used in reply.

“I don’t recognize that, man.” An aloof sharpening of his eyes hinted the subject was too hot to handle. “But I don’t think it’s something you should be messing around with anyway.”

“Okay.” I let it drop.

“Are you single,” he asked all of a sudden.

“No. You?”

“Yeah, I am. It’s kinda hard to keep a boyfriend with my busy work schedule.”

“I can imagine. You only into…?”

“Oh, not exclusively, but I do like to fuck white guys on and off duty.”

There was more free and easy, pot-fueled laughter.

“So, what’s your boyfriend like, Kohl?”

I tried not to blush with pride. “He’s a very cute Latino guy, curly hair and fair skin – kind of like a masculine Eros without wings. A little shorter than me, but he’s very bright, friendly and outgoing.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen him around too in the last week. Where’s he at now?”

“Gordon’s out doing his part time waiter gig. He’ll bring back food in a bit. I’m starving. Want to join us?”

“Thanks, man, but I’ve gotta go and be wined and dined by a local GOP officeholder. Part of his penance is to be seen in public with his racial kink advisor. Later I’ll need my ropes and whips, cuz he’s a tough nut to crack. Work, work, work.”

We laughed.

“You guys ever been to Burning Man?” He was asking about the artists’ festival held yearly in the Nevada desert.

“Nope.”

“You both should come with us this year. It’s like a sexual Disneyland, without the overpriced souvenirs. A great time is guaranteed for all.”

Just as I was about to answer, my phone vibrated with a text. “Sorry,” I said. “It must be from my boyfriend.”

I took it out and blinked disbelievingly at the screen.

It was not from my boy, and the message read cryptically: “I’m coming by tonight. It’s serious, and I have to see you. I think we’re…in some kind of danger.”

˚˚˚˚˚

The view from the roof of the Flying Dutchman was spectacular. Darkness had fallen, and the green and violet lights of the Queen’s Way shimmered along the waters of the harbor’s shore. Lollipops of lights over the road easily led the eye to the strip of land on the other side, and the spectacularly moored ocean liner, the Queen Mary. Her vermillion funnels glowed with their black tops, and a continuous string of bare light bulbs – longer than the entire Empire State Building was tall – rose up from the bowsprit, to the top of the forward mast, then arced gracefully over the funnels, all the way to her stern mast, and then down to the aft deck. It was enchanting on a calm, warm evening like this, and there was only one view like it in the world.

A short time after getting baked with Burtron ‘The Hammer,’ Gordon showed up and I told him about the text. He grudgingly accepted there was nothing we could do about it, so we ate dinner hurriedly – after a quickie.

Now, me, my boy and Assauer sat on folding chairs up here while organ music in surreal artiness wafted from somewhere below.

Gordon didn’t have time to change, so although his pencil-thin necktie was loosened – where, ahem, I tugged on it from behind – he was still wearing his black waiter pants and white shirt. Glancing at him like this made me hard and hungry for a dessert course.

My boy caught my inspection and shot me an ‘ask him already’ look.

Despite the anger I harbored for my ex, I had to admit Assauer washed up in Long Beach looking really haggard and tired. I couldn’t help but reach out and hug him at first sight, even though Gordon was right next to me and watching coldly.

Now, we were sitting here in silence, and I’m not sure why.

“So,” my boyfriend blurted out.

“So…?” I tried to soften the question.

Assauer leaned forward on his chair, propping elbows on his knees. “Ever since those donkey dick people, I’ve been feelin’ weird.”

“Yeah?” Truth was, I had been a bit paranoid and ‘off’ myself, like some shadow was just out of sight, watching over my shoulder.

“Yes. Word on the street in L.A. is the crazy cult members are on the hunt for the two guys who defiled their sacred ceremony. Honestly, I’m startin’ to get scared.”

I glanced at Gordon. He was concerned, I could tell.

My ex continued in more urgent tones: “I think I’m being followed.”

I panicked. “Idiot! You led them here, to us?”

“Nee, Dummkopf. I got off in downtown Long Beach, at the 1st Street subway station, and stepped right into an Uber to come here.”

Gordon asked, “How did you know anyway?”

“Where to come? I went down to Olvera Street to find Napoleon. He told me you guys were here.”

“So what do we do?” I wondered out loud.

Assauer cupped hands behind his head and leaned back comfortably. “I say we skip town until this whole thing blows over.”

Since my glances at Gordon, looking for signs of fear of Assauer returned none, I asked my ex, “But where would we go?”

“I have a former client – remember him about a year ago? He’s rich and at his summer house in Laguna Beach now. I already texted him, and he said to ‘cum on by.’”

I tenderly turned to my boy. “What do you think?”

He replied, unfazed, “I say we go. Something’s not right around here.”

I had to agree. “I know what you mean, and you’re okay with an end to the divorce?”

Gordon laughed. “Dude, I didn’t think it’d last long anyway. So, whatever.”

We all smiled and nodded at that.

“Okay,” Assauer asserted. “Let’s crash one last night here and head to Captain Hojax first thing in the morning.”

After we had sealed our pact, we settled back and wordlessly watched the twinkling harbor lights.

Along with the chilly, minor-key notes of Bach’s “Phantom of the Opera” music coming from below, a poem built on the strains of the current circumstances formed in my brain.

Do any lights really lead the way

To a place a wayfarer can stay,

If he but feels like a runaway…?

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